AT THE WHEEL

Tesla Wrecked in Deadly Texas Crash Was Not on Autopilot: Feds

After police said no one was in the driver’s seat, Elon Musk said that wasn’t possible.

After a Tesla Model S crashed in Texas last month and burst into flames, killing two men, police said no one was in the driver’s seat—raising speculation that the company’s Autopilot system was somehow involved. But a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board says it has evidence that the car owner and the passenger got into the two front seats and that the vehicle could not have been on Autopilot before it crashed, as Elon Musk tweeted soon after the tragedy. The NTSB says the car jumped the curb on a curve and hit a drainage culvert, a manhole, and then a tree—which is when its lithium-ion battery started the fire that engulfed the vehicle and killed the occupants. The NTSB is still examining data from the car to pinpoint the cause of the crash.